by Glover, Nhys
The bombs dropping nearby galvanised him. He felt the adrenalin pump through his system as his body went into high alert. The yell to scramble went up as an afterthought. They all knew what they needed to do. Get to the planes before they were blown to pieces like sitting ducks by the enemy above.
The twang of bullets skittering across the dusty ground in a line in front of him had him diverting his path in an instant. Before the dust settled, he was heading forward again, heading for his Spitfire on the makeshift runway. Had the ground crew managed to get it refuelled? They’d barely landed from their last mission. He hadn’t had a chance to even debrief yet, much less get hot food into his empty stomach. The padre, a wizen old gent with a serene smile, had given him a shot of whisky and a sugarcoated biscuit as he entered HQ, but that was all. Now, that meagre content seemed to be sloshing around inside him, threatening to come up again.
He could see the panic on the dusty faces of the men he passed. The air was thick with heat, sweat and fear. It felt as if he were choking on it. The sun beat down on his bare head, as fierce as the bombs dropping around him.
Then he saw her standing on the sand hill above the camp. Her straight black hair streamed about her in the dusty wind. Long. It was so long that it was half way down her back. Her short floral dress revealed her shapely legs, tanned brown by the sun just as her bare arms were. She was looking in his direction, her eyes squinting against the glare of sunlight, dust and distance, but he knew she could see him.
Her hand came up slowly and she waved. The chaos around him seemed to fade, a distant cacophony that no longer had centre stage. He could still hear the planes overhead; the whining sounds of shells as they descended; the ear-splitting explosions as bombs hit their marks; shouts of frantic men and the taste of dust and fuel in his mouth, but all that had become background static.
Cassie! What was she doing here in the middle of an air raid? Didn’t she know how dangerous it was? Didn’t she know she could die?
He was running toward her instead of his plane – even before he realised it – and she was running and sliding down the hill toward him. Men were screaming as shell fragments or flying debris took them down. Bloody body parts flew past him as a wave of heat threw him forward, almost off his feet.
But he couldn’t think about that now. The only thing that mattered was the woman coming toward him, her beautiful face twisted in fear and confusion.
They met when she reached the bottom of the hill right at the edge of the encampment. He wrapped his sweaty, filthy arms around her and breathed her in. Above the stench of battle, he could smell her honey and almond scent. Her body was cool and soft in his arms.
‘What’s happening?’ she cried into his ear. ‘What am I doing here?’
The whine of an incoming had him acting on instinct. He threw her to the ground and covered her body with his own. The bomb exploded only yards away, the dirt and rocks it threw up pounded against his unprotected back. He felt her whimper and he brought one hand down from above them and stroked her hair, calming her like a skittish filly.
‘How did you get here? You should not be here. It is dangerous.’ He gasped, unsure whether it was the hasty run across the compound or the feel of her body pressed against his that caused his lack of breath.
‘I had to find you… I thought I’d lost you,’ she said, as out of breath as he was.
He eased off her, knowing his weight was too much, but her arms came up to cling to him. ‘Don’t… don’t go!’
‘I will not leave you, Cassie. I promised. I will not leave you.’ And suddenly the only thing that seemed to matter was her mouth, opened slightly as she panted, dried out by the dust and the heat.
The moment their lips met, he was lost. Everything else faded away. There were no planes overhead, no blistering heat nor dying men. There was only this… them… kissing, lips moulded together as if they were meant for only this. Meant to be joined, seeking… taking… tasting…
Nothing had ever meant as much to him as this sweet, fragile being beneath him. The heat he was feeling no longer connected to the sun overhead. The thrumming blood in his veins no longer raced because of the danger around them. Everything he felt, everything he was, directly came from her. Came to her.
He deepened the kiss until it was a frenzy of need so overpowering, he thought he would climax, fully clothed, pressed against her in the sandy dirt of the North African coast.
This was wrong. He had to get her to safety. They were too vulnerable out here. However, nothing else mattered but the beat of her heart that felt as if it were his, her breaths that he claimed as his own and the taste and texture of her mouth so wet and warm as he explored it.
Before he was fully aware of it, they were no longer lying in the sun-scorched dust. Instead, they were pressed against cool, damp grass. The sun overhead was mellow and warm on his naked back. He could feel her skin against his own, smooth and silky as it shifted and stroked.
‘What?’ she said in surprise, breaking from the kiss to take in their change of scene. Long waves of black hair fanned out around her on the grass. It made her blue eyes seem all the bluer. It was as if little pieces of the sky had fallen to earth and become caught in her gaze.
He eased off her looking around them, as shocked as she was by the sudden shift of scene. Now they lay naked on a grassy hillside. Below them were the patchwork fields of the English countryside. Where moments ago the light had been glaring, now it was suffused and gentle, allowing the rich colours of green earth and blue sky to envelop them.
Hawk, dazed with wonder, looked down at her body. Her breasts were firm and upthrust, tipped with coral nipples that begged him to taste them. His hand came up and cupped one plump handful, savouring the feel of its weight, while his thumb and forefinger rotated the tip until it stood tall and hard between his fingers.
Cassie gasped and reached for him, stroking his shoulders, sending a skittering of delightful sensation across his skin. He couldn’t wait any longer; he had to draw that tip into his mouth to suckle it until she moaned.
When he did just that, her hands fisted his hair and the pain was exquisite. He sucked harder until her back arched and she wound her legs around his hips, pressing her hot core against his arousal. This time it was he who moaned, rotating his hips so he could feel more of her against his bare shaft.
How had they gotten here? Where was the airfield from which they had just escaped?
There were no answers to his questions, and he had better things to think about. His need was becoming unbearable, his desire for her overwhelming; but she wasn’t ready. He needed her to be ready…
Hating to separate his hard flesh from her wet entrance, he nevertheless did so. He needed to work his fingers inside her to prepare the way. She bucked at the intrusion and her head thrashed from side to side.
‘Please… I need you…’ she said as she panted and gasped. Had any woman ever looked so beautiful?
Her pleading and the feel of her wet heat around his fingers was enough. He positioned himself above her and thrust into her welcoming core.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Cassie’s eyes flew open and she cried out, so close to orgasm that she could feel it pulsing deep inside her. The ache between her legs was unbearable. Where was the heavy pressure that had been there seconds ago? Where was Hawk?
She shot to a sitting position, glancing around her bedroom at Grange End frantically. Then she saw him, his eyes open, stunned and quaking from the intensity of what they had experienced. She had no doubt – looking at him as he was now, fully clothed and sleep tousled – that he had been with her in that incredible dream.
Before reality could intrude any further, she leaned over him and plastered her mouth to his, thrusting her tongue into his mouth as he had done to her only seconds ago. However, the sensation was so pale in comparison to what had gone before, that she immediately drew back and curled into a tight ball, her back to him. The agony of her need was all consuming, and she
knew it couldn’t be met by the muted being beside her. The loss was overwhelming.
After what felt like an eternity, when her body was cooling and coming back from the brink, she registered his harsh breathing. Slowly, she turned back to face him, embarrassed by her need, mortified by the rawness of what she’d felt. Sex had never been like that for her, never been out of control, bordering on frenzied. She’d never wanted a man inside her as much as she’d wanted Hawk in that dream.
‘Wh… what happened?’ she asked, knowing he would have no more clue than she did.
‘Dream… just a dream…’ His voice was scratchy and deep, and he had to swallow a few times until he seemed able to talk properly.
‘There was nothing “just” about what happened. Not for me…’
He sat up in one smooth movement and wrapped her in his muted arms. The smell of starch and tobacco, and the subtle scent of male she was coming to know as him, tantalised her senses. It was a pale replica of what they had just experienced. Not enough. Not nearly enough.
‘Let’s go back to sleep again. Maybe we can finish what we started… I want you so much I…’
‘Me, too, but there must have been a reason why we were thrown out of that dream the moment we… came together. Maybe I am incapable now that I am a ghost.’
She drew back so she could look into the hazel eyes that reminded her of the place they had just been, so green and brown, so rich and deep. ‘There was nothing incapable about you that I could feel. I wanted you inside me so much I thought I’d combust.’
Her revelation had his body stiffening against her. She let her hand drift down between their bodies to feel the hard length of him. He moaned and buried his head against her neck.
‘You had glorious black hair and beautiful breasts,’ he said croakily, as she ran her hand over what she could barely sense as his hard flesh.
‘Yes, that’s what I used to look like. I guess it’s the way I still see myself. My self-image hasn’t caught up with the new me yet.’
‘I would rather have you this way than not at all. The physical side of what is between us is only a small part of what we are. Maybe that is why we had to stop, because it reduces the rest; makes it insignificant. That intensity was too much. I felt I was losing my sanity. It was drowning out everything else that you are. Your body, the feelings it aroused in me, took me away from you.’
Cassie lay back on the pillow as she considered his words. Is that how she felt? Had the act itself taken precedence over her feelings for him? Had he simply become a body who met her cravings? Not entirely. But there was something primal, something selfish about what was happening. The act had been everything. It had driven everything including an air raid from their minds. They had simply been a man and a woman in the throes of the reproductive urge. Mindless. All consuming.
But she knew firsthand that the intensity of the experience was directly related to how she felt about this man. He was the reason she had soared so high; it was his touch that ignited her. Hawk was not just any male body…
Then why had she been repelled when she kissed him once they were awake? It was as if she rejected this second-rate version because she couldn’t have the other. Yet the warmth and wonder she experienced in his presence was so special. It nurtured her and filled her with life. It made her whole again. He made her whole again. This ghost, Hawk, not the dream version.
‘So, no more dream sex, huh?’ she finally asked, reluctant to consider that possibility.
‘Let us explore the other parts of us first. I feel like I already know you and yet I know so little about you. I do not even understand this terrible thing that has happened to your body. You talk of cancer, but I know nothing of it. I do not know why you live with Marnie who is your best friend’s grandmother. Marnie said your parents were dead but I do not know how or when. I know so little about what makes you, you.’
‘And me you. Being in that war scene. That was your dreamscape, not mine. Where were we? When did that happen?’
‘A small base in Tunisia. A nightmare place for me. It was where I lost my best friend. We had been friends in school, had joined the Officer Flying School in Dęblin together and escaped to France and then on to England together. Mika was crazy, so full of life. He made the war seem like one big adventure.
‘Then we volunteered for a fifteen man Polish squad attached to the 145 squadron operating from Bou Grara Airfield in south eastern Tunisia. They nicknamed us Skalski's Circus. On the day that nightmare happened, Mika and I managed to get in the air but he was shot down almost immediately. He did not have a chance. I did not have time to protect him. I always had his wing, but not that day.’
‘So I turned up in your worst nightmare,’ she mumbled sadly.
‘Yes, and turned it into one of the most wonderful dreams I can ever remember having. You took me out of that hellhole, Cassie. Somehow, you pulled me out of it. That green hillside… that wasn’t mine. That was yours. You gave me your perfect place…’
She thought about this for a moment. Where was that hillside?
‘Of course,’ she exclaimed. ‘That was in the Yorkshire Dales just outside Skipton. We holidayed there when I was small. There was a farmhouse just on the other side of that hill that ran a B & B. Dylan, my older brother, and I used to run amok around that farm and wander the fields like adventurers. How strange that I should take you there for such an erotic encounter.’ She couldn’t help blushing. Memories of his naked body lying over hers in the sunshine were too powerful to ignore.
‘The perfect place for an erotic encounter, I would say. A perfect memory of happier times. I thank you for that.’
For a long time they lay talking about their pasts, sharing snippets of feelings and longings, as only true intimates can. By the time Marnie tapped softly on the door to tell her lunch was ready, Cassie felt as if they were closer than ever and she truly liked the man she was coming to know.
‘So, Hawk, what now?’ Marnie asked, looking off into empty space like a blind person.‘He’s sitting next to me on my right,’ Cassie informed her with a grin, indicating the seat at the kitchen table where Hawk now sprawled. She couldn’t remember ever grinning as much as she was doing now or feeling this happy.
She looked at him more closely as he leaned on one elbow, watching them as a cat watches two active birds in a cage. At the question, he lost his focus and frowned, rubbing his forehead.
‘What now? I do not know. Stay at Cassie’s side until the danger is past. Until I am certain she is not going to die.’
She repeated the answer to Marnie with a little frown of her own.
‘How long will that be?’ Marnie asked, obviously angling for some truths only she understood.
‘I do not know. How long after seeing me did the others die?’
Marnie’s face puckered with concentration when Cassie relayed this question. ‘Hmmm… for Gramps, it was the following night. For Gran, it was a few days. I don’t know about Nicky. He didn’t mention it until he was on his deathbed. He said he’d seen the ghost but not when.’ She paused for a moment to draw in several laboured breaths, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. It didn’t matter that her son’s death was more than fifty years ago, it was still an open wound that never seemed to have healed.
‘And Fran?’ Cassie asked, touching on her own still open wound.
‘Fran came home that Friday evening for a flying visit. She was very troubled, very on edge – more than ever before. When I asked her what was wrong she wouldn’t tell me; but it was serious, very serious. On the way to freshening up for dinner, she saw Hawk out of the window at the top of the stairs. She came back down as pale as a ghost, excuse the pun.
‘I asked her what was wrong and at first she didn’t tell me. All she did was rummage around in her purse until she found Gran’s locket. She didn’t wear it as you do Cassie; too old fashioned for her fashion sense. But she always kept it with her like a talisman.
‘While she was looking for a suit
able picture to put inside it for you, she told me what she’d seen. Then she rang to arrange to meet up with you on the next day before she flew back to Germany on Sunday. She was pushed off the tube station on her way to Heathrow.’
‘So that was two days later.’
Hawk reached out and put a comforting hand on the old lady’s clenched fist. Her surprised jerk back made it clear she had felt his unseen touch.
‘Anyone longer than a few days?’ Cassie asked.
‘No, not that I know of. Unless, yes, of course… my father. He saw Hawk the evening before he was due to go back to the front. He died in March ‘45, a little over a week later, at Oppenheim.’
‘Oppenheim? The Allied forces had made it to Germany by early ‘45?’ Hawk said with interest.
‘Yes, VE Day was 8 May 1945,’ Marnie answered when Cassie had passed on his question. ‘That’s the official Victory in Europe Day that marks the end of our part of the war. Of course, the war raged on in the east until the US dropped the atom bombs on Japan later in the year.’
‘Atom bombs?’ Hawk looked confused.
‘Nuclear weaponry based on splitting the atom. One bomb could wipe out a whole city. I’m not sure how many people died…’ Cassie informed him.
‘I think half the population of Hiroshima became casualties of that bomb… something like a hundred thousand or more people.’ Marnie was always good with statistics. For an old lady, she still had a very reliable memory, unless it was for mundane matters like locking front doors or paying the phone bill.
‘From one bomb?’ Hawk looked shaken.
‘Oh yeah, we’ve become very good at making weapons of mass destruction, not that we’ve ever actually dropped any more during a war since then; largely because everyone has them and it would probably mean the end of the world as we know it if they did.’ Cassie knew she sounded casual about such things, but nukes had become so much a part of life and possible death that she felt immune.
